Fastest £1,000 Server – back from supplier July 23, 2011

At the risk of turning my Blog into some sort of half-way-house tweet update thing (correct, I’ve never logged into twitter), as a couple of people asked about the outcome with the broken £1,000 server, I’m happy to report it came back this week. The motherboard had died. I’d convinced myself it was the PSU when I trawled the net as it seems to be one of those things that is most likely to die having fired up in the first place, but no, the motherboard. I guess some solder “dried” or the pc pixies just don’t like me. One month turnaround is not very impressive…

They had another motherboard exactly the same in stock so I got a like-for-like swap. I was kind of hoping for a different one with more SATA3 and USB3 headers 🙂

Now I’m trying to download the latest oracle 11 for 64 bit windows. I live out in the wilds of North Essex (for non-UK people, this is all of 62 Kilometers North-Northeast of London as the crow flies, so not exactly in an obscure and remote part of the UK! For those who DO know the UK, it is nothing like “the only way is Essex” out here. We have trees, fields, wildlife and a lack of youth culture.) As such, my broadband connect is sloooow. The connection keeps breaking and I lose the download. *tsch*. I’m sure I had a download manager somewhere which got around these issues…

I’ve long since come to the conclusion that most people outside the UK think that the entire UK is called London. Maybe they will recognize there is another “town or something” called Scotland, but only if they have seen Braveheart. 🙂

As a result, I happily agree that I live in a suburb of London called Birmingham. 🙂

On meeting some Americans {in America} way back when.
“Hey, you’re English! Do you know Baaarb? Baaarb from London?”. He meant Bob and no, I did not know him:-)

And yes, I know this is really unfair on all my American friends. I beg forgiveness now and admit I have no idea about Baseball, Ice Hockey and only a vague idea about American Football (like it hardly involved your feet). We all have our national blind spots.

BTW Tim – never admit you come from Birmingham. {I can say this, I come from there too 🙂 }

If it’s any consolation, I live in an area with halfway-decent cable broadband, and it was still a PITA to download Oracle 11. My ISP kept dropping the connection. Maybe they thought I was downloading a movie illegally. I don’t know.

Fortunately, Firefox is smart enough to resume a download after a dropped connection, so I eventually did get the files.

you should get yourself into the bit of Essex that has moved on from tractors and combine harvesters. Admittedly clapped out Fiestas and Escorts with spoilers might not be great, but we do have fast broadband. We have a better commuter line too 🙂